


Before Dawn

by sherleigh



Series: Halloween Fic [1]
Category: SHINee
Genre: halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherleigh/pseuds/sherleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another day, another variety show. SHINee have to pretend that their dorm is haunted, but they soon realise that not everything is scripted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Dawn

  


 

**Day 1**

 

A collective groan resounds in the meeting room.

 

“I thought we were past filming inane variety shows. Isn’t it EXO and Red Velvet’s turn now?” Jonghyun complains.

 

“You’ve been away from the Korean spotlight for too long,” Young Min explains. “Besides, you know very well that EXO isn’t in any condition for this sort of variety show at the moment, and it’s too much of a risk for Red Velvet. I don’t see why you’re complaining, it doesn’t involve much work on your part and we’re getting a good percentage of the ad revenue.”

 

Taemin doesn’t think that pretending to be haunted can be classified as not involving ‘much work’, and he’s annoyed that he has to stay at the dorm for the next couple of weeks, but he doesn’t let it show. It’s not going to change anyone’s mind and he probably won’t be saddled with the most lines anyway.

 

~

 

While the crew is rigging the dorm up, Taemin has coffee with Jongin at the café inside SM. They prefer the Starbucks that’s near the Hangang, but it’s broad daylight and Jongin has practice later on.

 

Jongin is jealous of the show. “You just hang about the dorm, pretend to get scared every now and again and that’s pretty much it. No sweat, no dirt, no embarrassing skinship or shipping moments.”

 

“Oh, my dear rookie Jonginnie, they will always find a way to have shipping moments.” Taemin reaches across the table to tweak Jongin’s cheek, because the younger hates it. “You should have learnt that by now.”

 

Jongin slaps his hand away and rubs his cheek. “Fuck off.”

 

“I don’t like the idea of being filmed in the dorm. We’re too comfortable there, there’s a high risk we’ll do something that shouldn’t be aired,” Taemin muses, thinking through the list of things he’ll have to abstain from. “Actually, I don’t know how much of it is scripted and how much we’re supposed to improvise.”

 

Jongin snorts. “What do you know?”  

 

**Day 2**

 

It turns out that the producers have a pretty tight script for them.

 

The other members have already read it, so Taemin excuses himself for ten minutes to familiarise himself with the storyline.

 

It goes like this: the members have had cameras installed in the dorm because of a series of unexplained events. Key and Jonghyun will state in an interview scene that they suspect sasaengs are breaking in.

 

The cameras will then catch supernatural things; odd noises when no one is at home, furniture moving around by itself and other minor things. The members will get more and more frightened, and the five-episode series will end with a priest cleansing the flat of restless spirits.

 

It’s a stupid idea, as far as Taemin can see. The fans aren’t going to buy that he and Jonghyun will voluntarily live in a haunted flat when they largely live at home anyway, and the whole priest thing reeks of a B-grade horror movie.

 

~

 

“What have you noticed?” The interviewer is a bland woman – this doesn’t matter, she’s not going to appear onscreen – and Taemin schools his features into an appropriate expression of disconcertion.

 

“My things keep moving. I know I lose my stuff a lot, and the hyungs always tease me about it, but lately it has become worse. I don’t think it’s my fault.”

 

“What do you suspect is the reason?”

 

There’s nothing in his script about reasons, so Taemin adopts the same one written out for Key and Jonghyun. “I’ve heard that this is something sasaengs do, from my friend Jongin – ah, Kai – in EXO. I heard they sometimes sell our things.”

 

~

 

Taemin sleeps easily enough. There’s a camera in the corner of their room, but the telltale red light isn’t blinking. He can hear Jonghyun shifting and turning, as well as the soft tap-tap-tap of fingers against a phone, but they do nothing to prevent him from drifting off.

 

 

**Day 3**

 

When Taemin wakes up, he’s confused. It’s still dark; he rarely wakes up before the sun. Jonghyun is still asleep.

 

He’s about to roll over and go back to sleep when he hears it; a quiet, almost fleshy, thumping from outside the room.

 

For a moment he’s scared, until he remembers the variety show and the script. Cursing, Taemin pulls his blankets over his head.

 

Because he’s awake and alert, he hears someone’s bedroom door creak open; Jinki’s room is far away, so it must be Key or Minho.

 

The noise stops.

 

Taemin goes back to sleep.

 

~

 

Key is in an irritable mood. Taemin has learnt by now to avoid him when he’s like this, so he makes breakfast for himself, warily eyeing the cameras in their hall, and sits in front of the television.

 

“Fucking stupid show,” Key mutters in a stage-whisper. “I bet the PD team got a good night’s sleep.”

 

“You heard the thumping?” Taemin asks.

 

“You’d think that they’d have the technology to edit the sounds in after the filming, but I guess not. I mean, what did they expect any of us to do? Wake up and check it out?”

 

“Oh, so it wasn’t you?”

 

“Eh?”

 

“Someone did go out. If it wasn’t you, then it must have been Minho-hyung.”

 

~

 

Minho is missing.

 

Gone.

 

His phone, his wallet, his car keys; they’re all inside his room.

 

The group, the managers and the production team gather around the television to go through last night’s footage; it turns out that there is a benefit to having cameras up after all.

 

Around three in the morning, a thumping sound can be heard in the dorm. From the way the director jumps at the sound, Taemin guesses that they didn’t plan it. Key’s face becomes pale.

 

At exactly ten past three, Minho’s door opens. He wanders down the hallway, presses his ear against Taemin’s door and Kibum’s door and walks towards Jinki’s room, which is out of range of this camera.

 

“Get the memory card for the kitchen camera,” Jin orders. One of the cameramen get up to do it, but before he can walk away, something appears on screen.

 

It’s Minho.

 

Key and a scriptwriter noona gasp at the same time. Taemin furrows his brow at their strange behaviour, looking closer at the television to see what it is that’s scared them so.

 

Minho turns at Taemin’s door, and that’s when Taemin sees the large carving knife in his hand. Taemin’s blood runs cold.

 

Minho tries the doorknob. Taemin can feel his heart pounding even though he’s alive right now, even though he knows that that door was locked last night.

 

When the door fails to give, Minho tries Key’s door. Key shakily sits on the floor.

 

Finally, Minho leaves the dorm.

 

~

 

“Is this some sort of joke?”

 

Jin is shouting, angry.

 

Taemin isn’t afraid of him; all he can see is Minho’s expressionless face, trying to open his door.

 

“I’m not staying over tonight,” Jonghyun says, again and again. “I’d rather sleep in a ditch.”

 

Jinki tries to restore some calm to the situation. “It’s not something we came up with, I promise. Maybe Minho came up with it with his Kyu-line or something, but we’re just as confused as you are.”

 

~

 

They call the police.

 

Some detectives come to take their statement, but they do little else. They also advise SM that it is safer for the other members to live in the dorm than to be allowed to go back home.

 

“Just change the keycode,” Detective Park says. “He won’t know it, so he can’t get in. We’ll post an officer outside the house and we’ll have a car patrolling the neighbourhood. But if you go home, he knows where you live and we can’t spare enough men to protect all of you.”

 

It’s clear that everyone still thinks Minho is playing some sort of prank on them. Nobody believes them – they’ve lived with Minho for six years, know him better than anyone – when they say that Minho would never do something like that. 

 

They stay.

 

~

 

Taemin doesn’t get much sleep that night.

 

Jonghyun checks that the door is locked close to ten times before he can bring himself to go to bed. Taemin is worried that he’ll break the lock altogether.

 

**Day 4**

 

After an hour of restless tossing and turning and clock-watching, Jonghyun suggests that they watch a movie on his laptop. Taemin agrees, and they huddle up together on Jonghyun’s bed with My Neighbour Totoro. It’s comforting, to have Jonghyun’s warm and solid bulk pressed against his side, and Taemin nearly dozes off when a loud screech makes them both jump.

 

Taemin freezes.

 

Jonghyun runs to the door, dragging a chair along with him to barricade it when the screech sounds again.

 

It’s coming from the window.

 

Taemin turns, despite every fibre of his being screaming at him not to. A dark shadow has fallen across the window, and it’s moving.

 

It screeches again, like brakes being slammed on.

 

Jonghyun’s legs give way. He crawls, shaking, towards the door.

 

Then comes the sound of something sliding against the window.

 

Is the window locked, Taemin wonders. Can the window be locked? He’s lived here fore three years, has he really never tried to open the window before?

 

Where are the police?

 

Taemin’s first question is answered when the window frames creak and the curtain lifts. It’s opening the window.

 

He’s still frozen in the pile of blankets, Totoro playing on the laptop. Jonghyun tries to open the door, but his hands are shaking too badly.

 

Something comes – slithers – in.

 

It throws something onto the floor; something dark and furry that lands with a squelch. Taemin doesn’t see what the thing is, doesn’t have the time – but he does, actually, because who doesn’t recognise the leader of the band they’re in – because that’s when Jonghyun finds his strength and throws the door open. Taemin can feel cold, slippery fingers on the back of his legs as he runs behind Jonghyun.

 

The police officer looks stunned when they open the front door, but it takes him only a blink of an eye to unholster his gun and run into the dorm.

 

Taemin thinks he’s going to die of a heart attack right there.

 

~

 

Jinki is gone.

 

Key doesn’t cry about Comme des’ death, not like Taemin had expected him to. The police officers take a long time to remove the dog’s broken body from Taemin’s room, about as long as they take to question him and Jonghyun.

 

Their questions make Jonghyun hysterical.

 

“Why the fuck would two of my members suddenly go crazy? Out of the blue, nothing, suddenly they snap and now they’re killing dogs? I don’t know anything, I’m done with this bloody stupid company and for all I know Tae or Key could be next-”

 

“Shut up.” Key’s voice is cold. “Don’t even go there.”

 

“Why the fuck not? Jinki was perfectly sane until he tried to kill us, how do I know Taemin’s not next? How can I sleep with him in the same room?”

 

It hurts a little, to hear Jonghyun talk of him that way. Of all the members, Jonghyun’s known him the longest. It hadn’t even occurred to him to suspect that Jonghyun might be the next to snap.

 

“Are you still insisting that this is some kind of prank?” Key asks. “How have you even managed to keep this shitstorm out of the media?”

 

“Your schedules have been cleared indefinitely, at least until we can locate Minho and Jinki,” Jin explains. “As for safety, that’s in the hands of law enforcement now.”

 

~

 

The police still won’t protect them if they go home. For a moment, Taemin contemplates packing his bags and leaving anyway, but Jonghyun’s question rings in his mind.

 

_How do I know Taemin’s not next?_

 

Taemin cannot rule out the possibility that this is some sort of mad cow disease and that he’s also infected; the last thing he wants is to lose his sanity and butcher his family while they sleep.

 

Real-time CCTV cameras have been set up in the dorm. There is now a police officer posted inside and one outside. Funnily enough, none of the managers want to spend the night.

 

~

 

Taemin rooms with Key.

 

Jonghyun had kicked him out. Logically, he could have stayed in Minho or Jinki’s room, or insist that Jonghyun take one of their rooms instead, but he doesn’t want to be alone.

 

He’s pretty useless alone. If he were a deranged maniac hell-bent on murder, an alone Taemin would be his first target.

 

Key doesn’t say anything when Taemin turns up in his room, pillows, blanket and bolster in tow. Garcons is at 6timber, safe.

 

At 11pm, the indoors officer lets them all make one last hot drink before turning in to bed. He reminds them to lock the door and windows. Taemin does so, and settles down in his makeshift sleeping bag. There’s no way he’s sleeping tonight.

 

Key takes his iPad out. “Wanna watch something?”

 

Taemin shakes his head. They never got to finish Totoro last night. “I’d rather not.”

 

Something like disappointment flashes in Key’s eyes. It scares Taemin a little bit.

 

“Oh. Erm, do you want to…uh, paint your nails or something? I can show you how to conceal your dark circles, you were asking me how to do that earlier right?”

 

One day, Taemin will write a book about how not to freak out when your roommate starts behaving really weirdly after your members try to kill you. If he lives.

 

“Maybe later?”

 

Key looks away. Disappointment is clear in his features now, along with something Taemin slowly recognises as self-loathing.

 

“Taemin…” Key’s voice is small, unsure. He looks down at his fingers. “Can you sit with me?”

 

It’s then that Taemin understands.

 

He’s off the floor in an instant, fears forgotten. Key fits easily in his arms, and, up close, Taemin can feel his hyung tremble.

 

“I’m scared too,” he admits, hiding his face in Key’s neck. “I want to go home.”

 

Key’s arms come up around him, holding on for dear life. Over his shoulder, Taemin sees the little red light of the CCTV camera blinking, and knows that some police officer is probably going to think that they’re involved. It reminds Taemin of his conversation with Jongin about shipping. It feels like a lifetime ago.

 

“When Minho left, I…” Key stops, and Taemin nods against his neck, wanting him to go on. “I thought it was planned. I thought the production were pulling a fast one, trying to actually scare us and get proper reactions for the show. I wouldn’t put it past SM.”

 

It makes enough sense to Taemin.

 

“That’s why I didn’t ask to leave. I was expecting something to happen last night too. I thought I was  _so smart_. But,” Key’s voice hitches. “…but even SM’s not crazy enough to butcher…to murder-”

 

“Hyung.” Taemin sits on his knees and pulls a quietly sobbing Key into his chest. “Hyung, don’t. We just have to get through tonight.”

 

Taemin’s alarm buzzes. It’s twelve.

 

  **Day 5**

 

Taemin blinks for the fifth time in as many seconds. He’s tired, he wants to sleep, but he knows he can’t.

 

He’s cuddled up to Key, the elder’s arm thrown over his shoulder, and it’s such a comfortable position that he doesn’t know how long his resolve to stay awake is going to last.

 

The alarm buzzes again. Two o’clock. Four more hours to go until daylight.

 

~

 

A thump jolts Taemin from his uneasy slumber. Next to him, Key sits up, almost as if he’s ready to bolt.

 

Taemin wonders why he never had the presence of mind to keep a weapon with him.

 

Footsteps walk past their door; they sound heavy, confident.

 

Then a crash.

 

Key jumps up, and realises belatedly that he has nowhere to run. Taemin grabs his arm, pulling him close. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do, only that he can’t lose Key – not now that Jonghyun has apparently turned too. 

 

Another loud crash, this time outside their door. It occurs to Taemin that they haven’t heard any gunshots. The police officers certainly don’t seem to think that the noises are worth investigating. He doesn’t know whether to take that as a good sign or bad.

 

Something heavy falls – or throws itself – against the door.

 

“Oh god!” Key’s voice is shrill. Taemin is panicking as well, but he doesn’t let go of Key’s arm.

 

The door shakes one more time.

 

~

 

“We should call the police.”

 

“They’re supposed to be watching real time CCTV footage of us. If they haven’t come with a SWAT team, maybe it’s because they haven’t seen anything worth coming over for.”

 

Key’s feigned nonchalance riles Taemin. It’s absurd, this pretence of cold logic, when they’re barricaded inside his room awaiting rescue. “Maybe whatever happened wasn’t on the cameras.”

 

“They cover the whole house.”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Yes, and it doesn’t make any sense.”

 

Taemin would yell, but he’s still afraid. “Oh yes, because everything that’s happening now makes perfect sense, does it?”

 

Key has no reply for him.

 

~

 

Not long after the sun comes up, Taemin hears the keycode being entered and the front door being opened. Key must have heard it as well, because he stands up and edges towards the window, cautious.

 

“Guys, are you okay?” It’s Jin. “Can you unlock the door?”

 

Key’s hand rests on the handle for a while. Taemin understands his hesitance, his suspicion, but he’s bolder now that it isn’t dark anymore. “Open it.”

 

Jin comes in. “Well, that’s two of you in one piece. Let’s go check on Jonghyun.”

 

“Did the police say anything to you?” Key asks.

 

“Oh, right,” Jin replies. “The guy they stationed inside got food poisoning last night, so he left halfway through his shift. The outdoor guy said he didn’t hear any disturbance and the cameras didn’t pick up anything. I trust you had a quiet night.”

 

Taemin snorts, and Key stomps on his foot before he can say anything.

 

They both take a cautious step backwards when Jin knocks on Jonghyun’s door. “Ey, Jjong, wake up!”

 

No one answers.

 

~

 

CCTV footage from the traffic lights across the street gives them grainy footage of Jonghyun scaling down the wall shortly after the police officer left. Taemin watches his usually not-so-graceful member scurry down 11 floors like a squirrel and tries not to wonder whether he’s gone to join Minho and Jinki. The CCTV camera inside Jonghyun’s room is short-circuited.

 

He still doesn’t know what the sounds he heard at night were. He doesn’t know who made them.

 

He doesn’t know what tried to come inside Key’s room.

 

~

 

“You can’t possibly ask us to spend one more night in here,” Key says, as soon as the detective walks in.

 

“No,” the man agrees. “We’ll set you up in a hotel room tonight, guarded inside and out.”

 

“Do you know what’s happening?”

 

There is hesitation before Detective Park says “Honestly? I’m not sure. The best I can come up with is that this is some sort of scam or prank that your bandmates have become involved in, although for what purpose I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t think…it’s not…” Taemin feels dumb for asking, but looking dumb takes a backseat to survival. “Something supernatural?”

 

He gets an incredulous look in return. “No.”

 

~

 

Key comes to get him while he’s packing his bags. “I’m going to see someone.”

 

It’s a plea to come along disguised as a statement. Taemin can never refuse Key when he asks, so he says “That’s cool. I needed a lift to the hotel anyway.”

 

~

 

There is something off-balance about this woman. She lives in a small flat, like any other, but everytime Taemin looks closely at something, it’s never what it seems; like the way the dust on her windowsill turns out to be grainy salt, or the way her many, many wind chimes turn out to be strings of dried chicken bones.

 

She looks normal too, until Taemin realises that she only looks at them out of the corner of her eyes.

 

He doesn’t know where Key found her, or how.

 

“It’s a curse,” she explains. “Your friends are dead, or as good as.”

 

Taemin doesn’t know whether he believes her.

 

“How can we break it?” Key asks.

 

“You can’t.” She passes it so easily, this death sentence. Taemin finds himself teetering on the edge of a panic attack, detached, almost, as the corners of his vision darken.

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she barks at him. “I didn’t curse you, and I’m not ripping you off by offering you some hokey cure that’s not going to do shit.”

 

“What can we do?” Key asks.

 

“You can curse the curser. He’ll either agree to the mutual removal of curses, or if he really hates you enough to die as well, at least you get revenge.”

 

Finally, a glimmer of hope. “How do we know who did it?”

 

~

 

“That fucking…” Key’s voice trails off, the elder seeming to have finally run out of curse words to describe the man who had inflicted this on them.

 

The betrayal has Taemin somewhat dazed. He’s learnt to accept the reality of being nothing more than an object, a marketable thing – the sooner trainees realise what they are to SM, the easier it is for them to cope with the high standards expected of them – but this; to think that his life is nothing more than a discardable brick in a lego set makes him sick.

 

He takes a little pleasure in the fact that the man must have realised by now that they have cursed him back.

 

It’s an inventive thing, their curse.

 

Key had come up with it. He can be the most vindictive little bitch when he’s angry.

 

They had cursed the man with the pain of eternal childbirth.

 

Taemin’s phone rings as they drive back towards more familiar parts of Seoul.  

 

~

 

A part of Taemin is glad that their curse has worked. Another part is still reeling in shock at the idea that curses are real.

 

Kim Young Min is rolling on the floor of his office, a hot water bottle clutched to his abdominal area. Despite this, his eyes are hard and his manner arrogant.

 

“Just lift the curse,” Key says “and we’ll do the same. I don’t even care why you did it.”

 

“I do,” Taemin finds himself saying. He cannot understand why their CEO has done this; why the man has thrown away a band worth millions for the sake of some lame variety show. “I want to know.”

 

“Perhaps after we lift the curses, yeah?” Young Min laughs. “I’m a little disadvantaged right now, if you can tell.”

 

Young Min’s carefree attitude unleashes the fury that’s been bubbling away under Taemin’s skin ever since his visit to Key’s curse worker. He wrenches the hot water bottle away and aims a kick straight into Young Min’s stomach.

 

“Taemin!” Key catches him before he can hit Young Min again. “Taemin, stop.”

 

“Tell me why.”

 

“There wasn’t an easier way…” Young Min reaches for the bottle again, sighing in relief as he presses it against himself. “I kept waiting for something to blow up, a scandal or something. I thought you’d want to split after your solo did so well, but no, your stupid band actually did better on the Japanese charts. What sort of band stays relevant after six years, tell me?”

 

“Wait, you wanted to end the band and instead of…of…terminating the contracts you thought you’d kill us? What?” Key has stopped holding him back, and now looks like he’s prepared to kick Young Min as well. “What sort of logic is that?”

 

“If the company had terminated SHINee, we’d have a riot outside. Our reputation would never recover. It would have been easier if you were the cause of the dissolution, but…well, put it this way, you’re all either really good at covering your tracks or you really, really need to get a life.”

 

Taemin cannot understand. Why would the company suddenly decide that they no longer want SHINee?

 

“But why? We did everything SM asked of us.”

 

“Yes, precisely. SM. Soo Man. You’re part of his legacy. I need to start mine, but how am I supposed to attract attention to the newer idols if everyone’s still banging on about you lot?” Young Min wheezes, pulling his legs close to his chest. “Goddamn, whose idea was this?”

 

“So you thought it would be a good idea to kill us all?”

 

“I’d have gone for something simpler and less lethal, but it tied in very nicely with that variety show. I wasn’t lying when I said we got a good cut of the ad profits. Can you imagine the amount of media time we would have got? Actually, we still might be able to use the footage-”

 

“You’ll stop it, right?” Taemin’s tired now; tired and angry and frustrated, and he can’t stand the sight of Young Min’s unrepentant face. “You’ll stop it now.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“He’s already got what he’s wanted,” Key says. “SHINee’s done for.”

 

~

 

Detective Park seems perplexed at Taemin and Key’s changed spirits when they turn up at the hotel room.

 

There are two heavily armed officers in the room; Key ignores them, so Taemin does the same. There are two single beds in the room, and they each take one. No conversation is made at all, save for the crackling voices that occasionally play through one of the officer’s walkie-talkie.

 

Nothing happens.

 

At around four, Key falls asleep. Taemin makes a mug of tea for himself – it’s too thin and milky, because he’s never learnt to do it right – and watches the sunrise by himself.

 

**Six months later**

 

It’s as if SHINee never existed.

 

Taemin lives at home and Key has rented a flat for himself in Gangwon.

 

They still go to some events together, and every now and again Key will call him out for a drink, but all in all it’s as if he woke up one morning after school and ended up where he is today.

 

He doesn’t like to dwell too much on Jinki, Jonghyun and Minho.

 

~

 

They don’t talk about it.

 

Sometimes, Taemin wants to ask him how he knew the lady who helped them. Sometimes he wants to ask whether Key misses SHINee, whether Key misses everything he and Jonghyun could have been. Everytime he works up the courage to ask, though, the look in Key’s eyes makes him back off.

 

Key is all he has left, and he knows that if he brings it up, the elder will never come back.

 

“Hey hyung,” he says, dropping into the loveseat beside Key. He can’t remember the name of this bar, only that it’s got a pineapple as its logo. He tries not to think how Jinki would have pointed it out and called it Pinee bar or something similarly silly.

 

“Hey yourself, redhead.” Taemin’s hair is red now. “And what the hell are you wearing? When are you going to learn how to dress yourself?”

 

It’s the same inane conversation they always have. Taemin already knows how the night will go.

 

They’ll drink and dance, maybe help each other flirt with whoever they find attractive. At 2am, they’ll stumble out of the bar, tipsy but not drunk, and take a cab back to Key’s place. They’ll fuck, even though Taemin isn’t Key’s type and Taemin prefers girls. Key will insist on showering after but Taemin won’t let him leave the bed - Key is stubborn but Taemin will trap him in a cage of arms and legs and kisses - and Key will cry on his shoulder when he thinks Taemin is asleep.

 

When morning comes, Taemin will wake up feeling like SHINee’s Taemin, because Key and Key’s room smell so familiar. He’ll shed a tear or two when he remembers that he’s not anymore, and Key will invariably wake up and offer him breakfast.

 

Taemin will leave without having breakfast, and he’ll promise himself that this is the last time.

 

That resolve will last until he looks up to see Key watching him from his apartment window; he knows he’ll be waiting for Key to call. He knows that as the days pass, he'll grow more and more afraid that the call will never come, but it always does. 

 

It always has. 

 

~

 

Sometimes, when it all becomes too much to bear and he’s tempted to tell somebody – he never will, he doesn’t want to ruin what little career he has left – Taemin will go to the record store in Dongdaemun.

 

There, he’ll go to a rack in the back and browse through the few SHINee CDs that are left. There’s a couple of Lucifer, one Romeo, one Everybody and one lonely Japanese I’m Your Boy; there used to be two of Romeo, but between his last visit and now, someone’s bought it.

 

It’s nice to see that there are still people who remember them, but Taemin dreads the day when all of the albums will be gone.

 

~

 

Curses have to be paid for.

 

In casting the curse on Kim Young Min, Taemin and Key had to sacrifice something in return.

 

“I will take your memories,” the lady had said. “Most people are remembered by their children and grandchildren. When their grandchildren are dead, they pass out of all memory and thus die. The great live on in the tales that are told of them, and they never die. You will never have children or grandchildren. You will never get married. You will never have a girlfriend. No one will have a crush on you, let alone fall in love with you. You will never again be a regular at a restaurant or bar or spa, even if you go there every day for a year. No one will remember your seating preference or your order. Your colleagues will forget you when you, and they, move on. Your friends will lose touch with you, slowly but surely. As your parents age, you will fade from their memories. No one will know you, love you, remember you. You will be forgotten.”

 

~~~

 

_So, was it any good?_

 

_Please leave a review and let me know what you thought of that little ficlet._

 

_Happy Halloween,_

 

_sherleigh_

 


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